Most of us believe that we perceive reality objectively. That events exist “out there” exactly as they are and we simply observe them. That first something happens and then we give it meaning.
Both philosophy and contemporary psychology, however, have been questioning this assumption for decades.
Constructivist currents in philosophy argue that our experience of the world is not a passive recording of an objective reality. Reality, as we live it, is shaped through the perceptions, experiences, expectations, beliefs, language, relationships and meanings we have developed over the course of our lives.
This does not mean that the external world does not exist. It means that the world does not exist in a single, objective way. What exists is our own way of taking in, interpreting and giving meaning to what we perceive.
Existential phenomenology formulated a similar idea long before contemporary neuroscience appeared. Merleau-Ponty argued that we are not neutral observers of the world. We are always already inside it. Every perception is an encounter between a person and their environment, shaped by the body, the history, the experiences and the possibilities of that person.
This is why two people can be in the same room, live through the same event, and leave with completely different experiences. We see this both in our relationships and in psychotherapy.
Not because one of them sees reality “correctly” and the other “wrongly”. But because each person meets reality from a different position of existence.
We do not see the world as it is.
We meet it from the point at which we stand within it.
What is interesting is that contemporary neuroscience appears to arrive at this philosophical position by a different route. According to models of predictive processing, the brain does not passively wait to receive information from the environment. Instead, it continually generates predictions about what is about to happen and then looks for evidence that confirms or disproves those expectations.
In other words, the brain does not work like a camera neutrally recording the world.
It works more like an interpreter, constantly trying to construct a picture of reality that makes sense for the person.
And in order to do that, it relies on what it already knows.
On what it expects.
On what it already believes.
On what it has lived through in previous relationships.
If someone has grown up with the sense that they are not enough, they are likely to develop a particular sensitivity to anything that seems to confirm that belief.
They will remember their mistakes more than their successes.
They will give more weight to criticism than to recognition.
They will focus on what they did not manage, even when they have managed a great deal.
If someone has learned that other people do not like them or are not really interested in them, they may become extremely sensitive to every possible sign of rejection.
A message that takes a while to be answered.
A neutral facial expression.
A moment of silence.
A change in tone of voice.
Events that could have dozens of different explanations turn almost automatically into proof of “reality”.
Because the mind tends to organise experience around what is already familiar to it.
And here something even more interesting appears.
We do not only see the world through our beliefs.
We begin to behave according to them as well.
When I believe that others will reject me, I become more guarded and more closed. Perhaps I avoid expressing what I feel. Perhaps I constantly ask for reassurance and acceptance. Perhaps I withdraw before anyone has the chance to come close.
The belief affects the behaviour, and the behaviour affects the relationship.
And in the end the relationship produces situations that seem to confirm the original belief.
“There you are. I was right.”
But expectations do not only affect what we notice and how we interpret events. They also affect the way we move through the world. The mind’s predictions do not stay at the level of perception. They are translated into attitudes, behaviours and ways of relating. So very often our expectations shape not only our experience of reality, but the very reality we help create in our relationships.
They also shaped the way we took part in that relationship.
The belief drove the behaviour.
The behaviour led to outcomes.
And the outcomes in turn reinforced the belief again.
This is what psychology calls a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Gestalt psychotherapy adds one further important dimension here. It does not hold that experience is created exclusively inside the individual, nor exclusively by the environment. Experience emerges at the meeting point between the two.
In the field of relationship.
At the contact boundary between the person and the world.
From this perspective, what I meet in my relationships is not only the result of what other people bring. It is also the result of the way I meet them.
My expectations, my fears, my needs and my old experiences take an active part in what emerges between us. And this holds true on both sides.
The first significant relationships of our lives do not only teach us who we are. They also teach us how to see other people.
They teach us what to expect from closeness.
What to expect from love.
What to expect from disagreement.
What to expect from rejection.
So we do not only carry memories of the past.
We carry ways of interpreting the present.
We carry expectations.
We carry a whole map of how the world works. But how often do we realise that we are doing this?
And often, without realising it, we try to fit new people and new relationships into that old map.
This is why therapy is not simply about replacing a negative thought or behaviour with a more positive one.
It is not only about understanding with the mind.
It is not only about learning why we are the way we are.
It is above all about awareness.
Recognising the lens through which we look at ourselves, at others and at the world.
Recognising the certainties about relationships and about the world that we take for granted.
The stories we tell about ourselves before we allow a new experience to exist.
Because only when these certainties begin to become visible and to be questioned as the one and only “reality” does space open for something new.
Space for other experiences.
Space for other ways of being and relating.
Perhaps, in the end, therapy does not simply help us think differently.
Perhaps it helps us inhabit the world differently, to exist in another way, more authentically and more wholly.
To recognise that many of the certainties we live by are not reality, but ways of existing within reality.
And when these certainties begin to loosen, it is not only the way we see ourselves that changes.
The world that becomes available to us changes too.
We come to recognise that there are more possibilities than the ones our history has allowed us to see until now.
And then we begin to perceive something deeply therapeutic:
That often what we were looking for was not a new reality.
It was the possibility of seeing with new eyes a reality that was there from the beginning.
References:
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phenomenology of Perception.
Yontef, G. & Jacobs, L. (2014). Gestalt Therapy.
Stolorow, R., Atwood, G. & Orange, D. (2002). Worlds of Experience: Interweaving Philosophical and Clinical Dimensions in Psychoanalysis.
Friston, K. (2010). The Free-Energy Principle: A Unified Brain Theory.
Kelly, M. et al. (2019). The Brain, Self and Society: A Social-Neuroscience Model of Predictive Processing.
Madon, S. et al. (2011). Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Mechanisms, Power and Links to Social Problems.
